Jorge Masvidal says Colby Covington will bring Secret Service to ATT to avoid gym fight

HOUSTON — Colby Covington hasn’t been to American Top Team since his loss to Kamaru Usman on Dec. 14, but Jorge Masvidal says he won’t be showing up alone when he does.

Both Masvidal (35-13 MMA, 12-6 UFC) and Dustin Poirier, teammates of Covington at ATT, have experienced issues with Covington ever since he started bad-mouthing them, but they haven’t had any confrontations onsite just yet.

So what will happen when Covington returns to the gym and crosses paths with his former best friend Masvidal? “Gamebred” says not much since Covington will likely have a lot of security with him.

“He’ll be with Secret Service, and they’ll be walking him around, and he’ll shout (expletive) when he’s at a safe distance,” Masvidal told MMA Junkie on Thursday. “If I’m bored, I’ll shout (expletive) back, knowing that nothing could happen because he’s with security, Secret Service. He’s got like four or five guys walking him to the bathroom, so whatever. He doesn’t even eat at the places he used to frequent a lot. He stopped going to all these places because he heard rumors that I was going there. This guy’s a coward.”

Covington fell short in his pursuit of the welterweight title when he was stopped with just a minute left in his UFC 245 battle with champion Usman. It was a back-and-forth battle in which one judge even had Covington up 3-1 going into the fifth round.

While it was dubbed as one of the best fights of 2019, Masvidal wasn’t too impressed with either fighter’s approach.

“I’ve known Colby for a while. He’s a glass type,” Masvidal said. “He’s the type of guy in training (who) would get hurt a lot. Broken his hands a lot, he’s had problems before in sparring, so it doesn’t surprise me that they broke his jaw.

“It surprised me that neither of them wrestled, and that spoke to me a lot that they’re not willing to have commitment like that and pull through on what got them there. They wouldn’t even switch it up. They decided they were both pretty even on the feet and wouldn’t take it to their own thing because they had too much pride, too much ego. ‘Maybe I get stuffed, maybe I get tired.’ I don’t know, but that showed a lot of weakness to me.”

All signs are pointing to Masvidal being the next challenger for Usman. The two already had an altercation during the Super Bowl week, setting them up for a much anticipated grudge match.

But what could be an even bigger fight is one against Covington, in a friends- turned-enemies matchup.

However, Masvidal doesn’t think the two will ever meet inside the cage.

“The guy (Covington) that got his jaw broken by the guy that I’m about to baptize? Probably not because he’d make a lot of money,” Masvidal said. “I don’t think he wins anymore fights to tell you the truth, man.”